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April 14, 2010: Deja Vu: Vanunu, Kamm and Blau and the Fragility of FreedomUPDATED May 17, 2010 @ end

On
April 14, 2010, Mordechai Vanunu reported from occupied east
Jerusalem,"The
restrictions, not to leave the country for one more year renewed. Now 7
years
since my release AFTER 18 YEARS in Israel PRISON."

T

wenty-four years after the Mossad kidnapped
Mordechai Vanunu from Rome after luring him from London, they have returned to
track down another who followed his conscience but has been labeled a traitor
by the state and a public who view truth tellers as a threat to their sense of
security.

The prey this time is Uri Blau, an
investigative journalist for the Israeli daily Haaretz, who went into hiding
after writing a series of reports exposing lawbreaking approved by Israeli army
commanders. Blau faces a lengthy jail term for espionage and Israeli security
services have warned they would “remove the gloves” and track down the
“fugitive felon.”

Jonathan Cook, reported for The National, “Options being
considered are an extradition request to the British authorities or, if that
fails, a secret operation by Mossad, Israel’s spy agency, to smuggle him back,
according to Maariv, a right-wing newspaper.” [1]

Blau’s informant and professional collegue, Anat Kamm, was
put under secret house arrest by Israel last December based on allegations that
during her military service she leaked classified documents regarding how Israeli
Forces violated laws dealing with targeted killings. Kamm was charged under Israel’s
espionage and treason laws while she was working as a reporter for the Israeli
site Walla, which had been partially owned by Haaretz until the week
prior to her December arrest.

The military censor, which prevents
publication of information that they deem could harm Israel’s national
security, approved the Haaretz story for publication. The Israeli court gagged
details of Kamm’s arrest and news of the arrest itself.

After a cyber storm of reporting, the
gag order was lifted and it was reported that shortly after her arrest, Kamm
admitted to copying the documents while serving in the office in charge of
operations in the West Bank, between 2005 and 2007. The 23 year old acted out of conscience to expose war crimes
and believed she would be forgiven for her honesty and integrity, and only time
will tell.

A prelude to the Kamm affair began in July 2009, when Kamm’s
brothers in spirit from Breaking the Silence, an Israeli human rights group
published 54 testimonies from Israeli soldiers regarding their experiences
during Operation Cast Lead.

The testimonies exposed the gaps
between the reports given by the army in January 2009 regarding the “accepted
practices; the destruction of hundreds of houses and mosques for no military
purpose, the firing of phosphorous gas in the direction of populated areas, the
killing of innocent victims with small arms, the destruction of private
property, and most of all, a permissive atmosphere in the command structure
that enabled soldiers to act without moral restrictions.” [2]

On February 3,
2010, The Independentreported that a high-ranking officer who served as a commander during
Operation Cast Lead, admitted that Israel’s army went beyond its previous rules
of engagement on the protection of civilian lives and “that he did not regard
the longstanding principle of military conduct known as ‘means and intentions’–
whereby a targeted suspect must have a weapon and show signs of intending to
use it before being fired upon – as being applicable before calling in fire from
drones and helicopters in Gaza last winter.” [3]

This week, Jonathan Cook reported that
Haaretz had also revealed that, in a highly unusual move shortly before
Israel’s attack on Gaza, it agreed to pull a printed edition after the army
demanded at the last minute that one of Mr Blau’s stories not be published. His
report had already passed the military censor, which checks that articles do
not endanger national security.

The Déjà Vu:

Kamm and Vanunu share the same
attorneys. Kamm is being tried for treason and espionage: Vanunu was convicted
of both.

Kamm and Vanunu acted on moral and
ideological grounds in a spirit of dissent from government policies of war and
deceptions.

Vanunu got 18 years in an
Israeli prison for exposing Israel’s 7-story underground clandestine WMD
facility in the Negev, which remains uninspected by international inspectors to
this very day.

On April 14, 2010, Vanunu wrote, “The
restrictions, not to leave the country for one more year renewed. Now 7 years
since my release AFTER 18 YEARS in Israel PRISON. The Israel stupid spies will
not get any thing from here. FROM NOW ON, FOR $1,000,YOU CAN MEET ME HERE, to support
my life here. VANUNU.” [4]

In 1986, after being clubbed, drugged, bound
and kidnapped by the Mossad, Vanunu was rendered defenseless again when the
court ruled that his motivations were not ideological and they refused to allow
Vanunu's own statements regarding his intentions to be
considered in his defense.

In 1986, Nuclear Physicist, Frank Barnaby was
employed by the London Sunday Times to interrogate Vanunu and review the
57 photos he had obtained at various restricted/top secret locations in the
Dimona. Barnaby spent three days with Vanunu in London before he was lured and
abducted by the Mossad from Rome. Barnaby attended Vanunu's closed-door trial
and was called by the defense to give expert testimony. He testified:

"I found the fact that Vanunu was able to smuggle a
camera and films into and out of Dimona and photograph highly sensitive areas
in the establishment astonishing…I very vigorously cross-examined Vanunu,
relentlessly asking the same questions in a number of different ways and at
different times…I found Vanunu very straightforward.

“After questioning him about his motives for
violating Israel's secrecy laws he explained to me that he believed that both
the Israeli and the world public had the right to know about the information he
passed on. He seemed to me to be acting ideologically. Israel's political
leaders have, he said, consistently lied about Israel's nuclear-weapons
programme and he found this unacceptable in a democracy.

“The knowledge that Vanunu had about Isreal's
nuclear weapons, about the operations at Dimona, and about security at Dimona
could not be of any use to anyone today. He left Dimona in October 1985 and the
design of today's Israeli nuclear weapons will have been considerably changed
since then…Modern nuclear weapons bear little relationship to those of the
mid-1980."[5]

Blau is charged with espionage: Vanunu was convicted
of it.

In exchange for a promise protecting both him
and his source from investigation, Blau returned 50 documents but authorities
claim he still holds hundreds more classified documents.Israeli officials have invited any spy
agency represented in the UK capital to pursue Blau, who has been out of the
country since December. While on holiday a friend warned him that the Shin Bet
had broken into his home and ransacked it. He later learned that the Israeli
secret police had been monitoring his telephone, e-mail and computer for
months.

Article 9 of the International Covenant on Civil and
Political Rights upholds that "No one shall be subjected to arbitrary
arrest or detention", including abduction of a person by agents of one
state to another state.

Section 99 of the Israeli Penal Code, treason is defined as
"an act calculated to assist (an enemy) in time of war...delivering
information with the intention that it fall into the hands of the enemy."

Section 113 defines aggravated espionage as "deliver(ing) any secret
information without being authorized to do so and with intent to impair the
security of the state" and a sub-clause provides for a penalty of seven
years for the unauthorized collection, preparation, recording or holding of secret
information; if this is done with intent to impair the security of the state
and then, the penalty is increased to 15 years.

The Israeli army and Shin Bet are attempting
to silence investigative journalists and the court system not just enables; it colludes.

“We have a dangerous precedent here,
whereby the handing over of material to an Israeli newspaper … is seen by the
prosecutor’s office as equivalent to contact with a foreign agent,” said Eitan
Lehman, Ms Kamm’s lawyer. “The very notion of presenting information to the
Israeli public alone is taken as an intention to hurt national security.” [6]

If Kamm is convicted of espionage with
intent to harm national security she could be sentenced to 25 years in jail. Blau
published several stories that apparently were based on Kamm’s documents, which
exposed how the army command approved policies that broke international law and
violated the rulings of Israel’s courts.

Blau’s reports revealed that senior
commanders approved extra-judicial assassinations in the occupied territories
that were almost certain to kill Palestinian bystanders and the army issued
orders to execute wanted Palestinians even if they could be safely captured in
violation of a commitment to the high court. Blau also exposed that the defence
ministry compiled a secret report showing that the great majority of
settlements in the West Bank were illegal even under Israeli law. [Ibid]

B’Tselem, an Israeli human rights
group, said its research had shown that “in many cases soldiers have been
conducting themselves in the territories as if they were on a hit mission, as
opposed to arrest operations.” [Ibid]

On February 22, 2006 it was revealed in
court that Israel had asked Microsoft to hand over all the details of Vanunu's
Hotmail account before a court order had been obtained.

Vanunu wrote, "Microsoft obeyed the orders and gave them all the
details…three months before I was arrested and my computers were confiscated…it
is strange to ask Microsoft to give this information before obtaining the court
order to listen to my private conversations. It means they wanted to go through
my emails in secret, or maybe, with the help of the secret services, the
Shaback, Mossad.

“Sfard [Vanunu's attorney] proved that the
police had misled the judges who gave the orders to arrest me: to search my
room, to go through my email, to confiscate my computers and that they misled
Microsoft to believe they are helping in a case of espionage.

“The State came to the court with two
special secret Government orders; Hisaion [documents or information that are
deemed confidential by the government and kept from the court, the defendant,
and lawyers.] This allows the prosecution to keep documents related to my court
hearing secret. One was from the Minister for Interior Security and one from
the Minister of Defense."

Vanunu's secretly taped police
interrogations, his 2004 Christmas Eve arrest for "attempting to leave the
country" when he attempted to celebrate mass at the Church of the Nativity
in Bethlehem, the confiscation of his private property by thirty IDF that
stormed into his room at St. George's Cathedral in 2004, Vanunu wrote had all "been done under the false and misleading statements to the
courts of 'suspicion of espionage', and yet they are not charging me with spy
crimes…and the fact is that I have not committed any crimes."

The crimes of the state are blatant and more
will be exposed as the Kamm trial proceeds and Blau's destiny unfolds.

Until Israel relents and allows
Vanunu the right to leave the state and fade into the world, he will continue
to remind any with eyes to see that when acts of moral conscience are viewed as
the enemy of the state; freedom is fragile- if not already an illusion.

Hi, FROM APRIL 2010. This is Vanunu ,Auto reply. FROM
APRIL 2010 until 2011. NO﻿ any news here. The
restrictions,not to leave the country for one more year renewed,
Now 7 years since my release AFTER 18 YEARS in israel PRISON. The
isreal stupid spies will not get any thing from here. FROM NOW
ON,FOR $1,000,YOU CAN MEET ME HERE,to support my life hereVANUNU.
AFTER 23 YEARS,NOW I AM SENDING GOD AND RELIGION,FREE FROM MY
CASE22/11/2009.

Attorneys: Kam would have made material
available to
hostile
elements had she sought to damage Israel.

By Ofra Edelman

Defense attorneys for Anat Kam, who is
suspected of passing on secret documents to Haaretz reporter Uri Blau,
have already began negotiating with the prosecution for a plea bargain,
Haaretz has learned.

The state has decided to prosecute Kam for the most serious
crimes of espionage: passing on classified information with the intent
of harming state security.

The charges carry a maximum sentence of life in prison.

Kam faces other charges, including gathering and possessing
classified materials with intent to harm state security, which carries a
maximum 15-year prison sentence.

Israel's criminal code contains a number of other statutes that
Kam could have been charged with violating for her alleged actions, that
carry significantly less harsh punishments than the ones she has been
charged with.

In their negotiations with the state, Kam's attorneys, Avigdor
Feldman and Eitan Lehman, will seek to plead down the charges against
their client.

One of the main arguments made by Feldman and Lehman is that by
passing on the information to Blau, an Israeli journalist bound by
Israeli military censorship, Kam demonstrated that she did not intend to
harm state security.

The lawyers say that had Kam sought to damage Israeli she would
have made the material available to hostile elements.

Israel's penal code includes a law against passing secret
information to an unauthorized person, without attributing to that
person intent to harm state security. It carries a punishment of up to
15 years in prison.

Furthermore, for someone who is not authorized to hold official
documents or use them in an unauthorized manner, the maximum sentence is
five years.

A civil servant who gives out, without approval, information
received in connection with his job to a person unauthorized to receive
such information, even after he has stopped being a civil servant, is
subject to serve no more than three years in prison.

For possessing information - as opposed to passing it on - that a
civil servant is not authorized to have, the sentence is up to one
year.

The law also states that a person receiving a secret document on
condition that he must keep it secret, who passes it on to a person who
is not authorized to receive it, can serve up to a year in prison if
convicted.

The justice minister refused to comment on discussions held with
defense attorneys, and would not confirm or deny this report.

A
young Israeli soldier leaked documents alleging that generals broke the law.
The whistleblower will pay. The brass probably won't.

Gershom Gorenberg |
April 19, 2010 | web only

…One more crucial detail, which to the
best of my knowledge has not been previously published:

According to that same
quite reliable source, Kam's trove included the so-called Spiegel Report, a
secret military document detailing illegal construction and theft of
Palestinian-owned land in West Bank settlements. In January 2009, Blau published
an article on the contents of the report, along with extensive
excerpts in Hebrew. As former U.S. ambassador to Israel Dan Kurtzer
explains in a recent essay -- with
characteristic diplomatic understatement -- the Spiegel material shows that
"even with respect to settlements authorized by the Israeli government and
supposedly in compliance with Israeli law, there were systematic violations of
the law." The Spiegel Report is essential to any reasoned debate in Israel
about the settlements' future.

With all due caution about making
predictions, it seems likely Kam will do jail time. In a morally complex
universe, an army has to deter soldiers from taking home gigabytes of
classified material. In the same morally complex universe, Kam also deserves to
be decorated by the Parliament or president for serving the public good. With
all due caution about predictions, I'm not expecting a press invite to the
awards ceremony. One more forecast: Though the case raises suspicions -- of
everything from aggravated incompetence to defying the Supreme Court and
perhaps murder -- about other people, none of them will pay a price. This will
be a variation on what Israelis call the "sentry syndrome," in which
the lowest-ranking soldier takes the rap and the brass gets off.

Part of the incompetence involves
officers and officials failing to notice that they live in the digital age.
Technical ignorance apparently made some of them complicit in her breach of
secrecy. It allows others to exaggerate her offense. According to one report
(obviously based on leaks by people not named Anat Kam), Gen. Naveh received
secret reports by e-mail on the army's internal network and wasn't supposed to
print or copy them. But Naveh was reportedly one of those 20th-century bosses
who likes reading his e-mail on paper. So the messages were transferred to
another computer, and Kam printed them. She also saved them as files. Don't
expect the ex-general to pay for breaking the rules.

When Kam was about to be discharged,
she copied the files to two CDs. The indictment says she
took 2,000 documents, of which 700 were secret. The quantity seems damning,
undermining any claim that she intended to reveal specific violations of law --
until one remembers that on a computer, it's much easier to copy a whole
directory than start picking through the files.

Something worse than incompetence has
been shown by commentators for other Israeli papers who have attacked Blau and
Ha'aretz. (Full disclosure: I've written on and off for Ha'aretz over the years.)
Military correspondents at every paper depend on leaks, usually from people
with much higher ranks than Kam. I know of two essential works of Israeli
history based in part on secret papers that Cabinet ministers kept after they
left office. In the best case, Ha'aretz's critics are showing intense
professional jealousy; in the worst, they are playing to the public's jingoism.
Either way, they've forgotten that the press' job is not to help the military
keep its dirt hidden.

What really demands scrutiny are the
affairs that Blau uncovered. Former Israeli Attorney General Menachem Mazuz
released a statement this week saying he'd looked into Blau's story on targeted
killings at the time it was published and concluded that the army had not
broken the law.

Unfortunately, a statement by the government's top lawyer that
the government obeyed the law does not inspire total confidence. An outside
investigation would be appropriate. Mazuz certainly didn't rush to act on the
Spiegel Report by prosecuting settlers who built on privately owned Palestinian
land or officials who helped them.

The underlying dilemma is this: A
government does have the responsibility of protecting its citizens. It needs an
army to do that, and an army needs to maintain secrecy. It can't function if
every soldier decides what to declassify. But armies also use secrecy to hide
mistakes, failures, and crimes.

"HOPE has two children.The first is ANGER at the way things are. The second is COURAGE to DO SOMETHING about it."-St. Augustine

"He who is not angry when there is just cause for anger is immoral. Why? Because anger looks to the good of justice. And if you can live amid injustice without anger, you are immoral as well as unjust." - Aquinas

Everyone has the right to freedom of
opinion and expression; this right includes freedom to hold opinions
without interference and to seek, receive and impart information and
ideas through any media and regardless of frontiers.

" In the final analysis, it is between you and God. It was never between you and them anyway."-Mother Teresa

“You cannot talk like sane men around a peace table while the atomic bomb itself is ticking beneath it. Do not treat the atomic bomb as a weapon of offense; do not treat it as an instrument of the police. Treat the bomb for what it is: the visible insanity of a civilization that has ceased...to obey the laws of life.”- Lewis Mumford, 1946

The age of warrior kings and of warrior presidents has passed. The nuclear age calls for a different kind of leadership....a leadership of intellect, judgment, tolerance and rationality, a leadership committed to human values, to world peace, and to the improvement of the human condition. The attributes upon which we must draw are the human attributes of compassion and common sense, of intellect and creative imagination, and of empathy and understanding between cultures." - William Fulbright

“Any nation that year after year continues to raise the Defense budget while cutting social programs to the neediest is a nation approaching spiritual death.” - Rev. MLK

Establishment of Israel

"On the day of the termination of the British mandate and on the strength of the United Nations General Assembly declare The State of Israel will be based on freedom, justice and peace as envisaged by the prophets of Israel: it will ensure complete equality of social and political rights to all its inhabitants irrespective of religion it will guarantee freedom of religion [and] conscience and will be faithful to the Charter of the United Nations." - May 14, 1948. The Declaration of the Establishment of Israel